TOPIC: Passed PMP at 1st Try. 5AT

It's a pleasure to inform about today result. I had PMP Exam with 5 Above Target exam.
I would like to share with you some lesson learned, considering that it was really helpful review them during my preparation.

Study Sequence:
1) Rita Mulcahy - PMP Exam Prep: Read to times doing all the exames after each chapter
2) PM Prepcast: start with 50 question (Timed and Learning Quizzes) for each Knowledge Area to understand the knowledge needed in each Area (totally 500 question); deep review of all the correct and wrong answers.
3) While reviewing the simulator answers i understoon that i had some lack of knoledge having not read the PM BOK. I started keeping it open and reading following the reference in the answer explanation
4) Full reading of the PMBOK including the first part of each chapter "Key Concept", "Trend & Emerging Practices""Tailoring Consideration"; "Consideration for Agile".
5) Start with simulation exams on PM Prepcast, always “Time and Learning Quizzes” in session of 100 +100 selecting “only unanswered question”, so that you are sure that your knowledge and statistics are not impacted by already seen questions
6) Completed 1500 questions (including some ITTO) and deep review of all of them
7) Completed three times the 200 PMI question from PMI website
Opinion:
- Only with Rita’s book you will not probably fill all the gaps; a clear understanding of all the 49 processes is fundamental and how to move back and forward through them. Pag. 25 of PMBOK should be known by heart an managed properly
- Not needed to memorize the ITTO’s, only a clear understanding of what they mean and how to use them
- Fundamental is to understand how the question are formulated and to focus on key words “what to do first”, “how to solve”, “the least”, etc.
- Do not be confused by the noises in the question and understand what is really useful to select the proper answer
- There is not the perfect answer as you can expect, but only the one that is the best among the four. Many times you would complain that it is not in line with PMBOK, but it is the best among the four given
Exam Feedback:
- Four hours are enough and you have time to review all the answers, you have to properly manage the time.
- I immediately wrote down a grid stating the time blocks (240-210-180-150 etc) and the targeted answers (0-25-50-75 etc); this helped me a lot to see if I was on track
- Remember about the scheduled break that has been implemented, after the question 89. So you have to consider to keep at least 133 minutes for the second block to stay in the average. (107 minutes for 89 questions plus the review; you will not be able to see the first block after the break.
- There is not so big “formality” in describing the question and are shorter and concise that PM Prepcast simulator. You have to make some more assumption
- There are many questions for which two answers seem correct; I selected the one that seemed answer better to all the assumption stated
- Just few question that need calculation or writing down critical path

This was my experience, a long journey of 5 months in which I studied almost all the week ends.

Hope this will help, as shared lesson learned helped me during my journey.

And now Celebration Meeting - T&T of Close Project or Phase

Congratulations! Thanks for sharing your story with us.

Congratulations Davide, really happy to hear you got PMP certification!
Good job!

Congratulations, Davide! And thanks for sharing your lessons learned on your journey.

Gabriella